Greg's big blog of whatnot

Un-clogging the backlog of stuff I’ve been meaning to blog about during the past week or so, here’s one that caught my eye. And not just because it references the new Asia Society building in Houston. There’s a wonderfully valid point here about why such a thing is considered necessary …

Some may question the need for an Asia Society in an increasingly globalized world. But the society’s executives say the institution has become more essential because it can serve as the link among various constituencies.

“The world is far more interconnected today,” Mr. Chan said. “Hence the need to understand each other is greater than ever before.”

At the day job, we’ve lugged various presentations to a number of groups to talk about and demonstrate why multicultural population growth requires some new thinking in terms of how people communicate with their target audiences. The solution is never to assume uniformity (even though there can certainly be overlapping similarities in different markets). But the challenge is how to differentiate effectively when you’re confronted by diversity that’s far more fragmented today than it was before.

Asian culture is a key in the learning experience for that, since there are so many distinct cultures and nationalities that often require such differentiation. But its not just Asian populations anymore. Anyways, just article is an interesting datapoint somewhere in the vicinity of the topic. Read it and check out Houston’s facility when it opens.

First things first, there’s now a lawsuit that was initiated based on the first map done for new County Commissioner Precincts. Then a new map came out Friday (see below). But the adjustments, as you’ll see, aren’t enough to undo anything from the lawsuit.

And then … cold hard math. I haven’t gone through and calculated CVAP numbers for the district, but it’s safe to assume that they are just as retrogressive as the topline numbers you see here. I’d guess that they at least took the Anglo percentage to just less than an absolute majority, however.

So, if this is indeed the final map that the county intends to submit, it looks like they’re going down to the wire with a contention that the 2001-drawn starting point is a valid baseline rather than the more traditional 2010 baseline. We’ll see in about 60 days or so if that’s good enough for the Department of Justice. I don’t know what the probability for that is, but I would suspect the odds are worse there for the map getting precleared than they might be for a judge.

For the sake of consistency, here’s the view of the northern portion of Pct. 1 and Pct. 2 (shared slightly white for differentiation) with CVAP color-coding for majority demographic within each census block group. You can still see that there is a sizable portion of heavily African-American population outside of Pct. 1 while the new map does a somewhat better job of including the Hispanic parts of Aldine. You can see the previous iteration of this map here for comparison.

And if you’re not buying those CVAP numbers as anything more than voodoo math, here’s the total population version of the same map, which makes it a moot point about why it was impossible to include more Hispanic areas …

More goodies that I’m belatedly getting around to with the blog … this time, the proposed County Commissioner’s Precinct boundaries. Zoom, click, download, do with it as you wish. The edits on geography that changed from the present boundaries was done by hand. So if I missed anything or got a precinct wrong, feel free to let me know.

See the District K post for disclaimers and caveats and so forth. These are the demographics for turnout in the new District J, which is my new district. As always, it’s worth keeping the CVAP numbers in context when seeing the turnout numbers. In this case, the district is 25.3% Hispanic, 33.6% Anglo, 30.8% African-American, and 9.5% Asian. I think you can see from the data below why I think it’s incorrect to call this a “Hispanic Opportunity District” in any form whatsoever. As if the fact that the guy who drew is doesn’t characterize it as such isn’t enough of a reason.

Already, there is one candidate in the race: Chriselda Romero, a staffer with Ed Gonzalez’ office. I know a few other possibilities are looking it over and I expect there to be a sizable pool of candidates running when it’s game time. A runoff is inevitable and I’d hope that a heightened interest in the district raises turnout in the runoff since this area typically gets totally forgotten during such elections.

Ever wonder what the demographics of an election turnout look like? Here’s the first in a series of some of the new City Council districts and what they look like in terms of who turns out in odd-numbered years.

I think it could be argued that for a majority-minority city such as Houston where Hispanics are the largest group, having elections in odd-numbered years might be viewed as a means of minimizing voter participation. Understandably, there’s an argument to be made that if you were to hold city elections coinciding with Presidential elections, that a lot gets drowned out over the big important issues such as whether a Kenyan-born Communist wears enough flag pins on his lapel or whether the Panamanian-born free-marketer has totally lost his marbles based on his pick for Vice President. Hard to cut through the fog of that with some exciting chatter on drainage fees and whatnot.

Still, it’s no accident that turnout behaves the way it does in November elections vs May elections; in even-numbered vs odd-numbered elections, and in Presidential vs Governor election cycles. If you want to see a maximum of participation, you simply can’t beat holding an election alongside Presidential elections. And if you want to see a minimum of participation, hold them in May of odd-numbered years. Given the low levels of participation in some districts in Houston, it could be interesting to see how much turnout moves up due to a competitive runoff situation. That’s certainly something I wouldn’t mind seeing in my own District J, which we’ll take a look at after this.

Whether you consider the turnout to be a function of when an election is held or not, here’s the math to at least demonstrate the symptom. First up … southwest Houston’s District K (map). It’s worth keeping the numbers below in the context of what the CVAP numbers are for the district. In this case, it’s 51.1% African-American, 26.2% Anglo, 17.5% Hispanic, and 4.3% Asian. As you can see, the numbers change dramatically once the polls open.

The numbers are from a count done in the Voter Activation Network. Keep in mind that “Other” is actually a pretty useful starting point for “Anglo.” There are other Anglo groups that should be added: Jewish & Greek, for instance. By nothing more than my own guesstimation, I don’t believe the Jewish numbers at all. In precincts where I have a good feel for the raw numbers, I’m seeing way too low of a count. But rather than add them up into an Anglo count, I’m rolling it out raw. Since the district include some Jewish neighborhoods, it’s relevant to know that those numbers aren’t really as bad as this would indicate. As just a rough heuristic, I’d be inclined to say that those counts could easily be tripled, if not factored significantly higher.

The African-American numbers do seem fairly believable – something I wasn’t much of a believer in from previous campaigns. There may be a point or two worth moving from “Other” and putting in the African-American count, but I don’t think it’s much more than that. Clearly, VAN has gotten better at A-A identification than in years past. Nice to see that.

In this case, it strikes me as interesting that African-American turnout rises as interest in the election goes down. This may be due, in part, to the fact that a sizable share of Anglo voters haven’t had anywhere to go in the two cycles shown here. Nearly 2/3 of Anglo voters who turned out in the 2007 runoff appear to have not cast a vote for either the Jones-Trevino runoff or the District D runoff in that year.

Last week, I focused on a comparison of the new districts in southwest Houston. This time around, there’s one holdover in the comparison of the African-American districts. That’s District K. The reason is to demonstrate how it differs from the existing two districts (as they exist in the new map, that is). Bottom line: still a strong African-American district, but not quite as solid as the other two.

The easiest way to see this is to look at Gene Locke’s showing in all three districts in the first round of the 2009 Mayor’s race: 65% in B … 57% in D … 41% in K. The runoff showings are certainly a demonstration of how daunting other head-to-head contests might be for non-African-Americans. But the fact is that a wide-open field in the first round has some opportunity for a surprise or two. It would still take a lot to see an Anglo elected in the district and I certainly think it would be uphill for a conservative candidate of any variety to win in K. But depending on the scenario, a runoff could conceivably end up with a stronger non-African-American candidate. Wait and see who files and then wait for the votes to be cast, but the district certainly has some potential to come up with some entertaining results sometime this decade.

In this case, I didn’t go through and add the relative strength to the candidate’s citywide showing since the relevant view of this is to see how strong each district is for African-American candidates. Suffice it to say, I think they all over-perform their citywide percentages in each of these.

More election math here. In this installment, I’ve got the three southwest Houston districts. Since they’re the ones that are the most different and/or new and that I’m familiar with, I thought I’d see what the numbers have to say in greater detail. In order to add some context, I’ve included the 2007 At Large 5 contest since it offers a glimpse into what an African-American vs Hispanic candidate contest might suggest about each district. As with the disclaimer for the 2009 election math, I should point out that the same method was done for 2007 and that there is another slight margin of error introduced since we’re going further back in time. But since the margin is still minor, I think it’s close enough. If someone else has a richer database to compare apples-to-apples with, by all means speak up.

The relevance of these numbers comes in comparing them to the candidate’s showing in each round. For that reason, I’ve added a +/- next to their percentage showing in each district.

In keeping with my suspicion that African-American candidates might have a shot at this district, I think both of these contests indicate some of that strength in different ways. That Locke did better than his citywide showing in the runoff is impressive. And while Jolanda underperformed in the district, it’s worth noting that one key difference between the two contests is that this At Large contest was not a very high-information election. It’s more telling that she still managed to win while the more informed runoff voters in the district likely had a better clue as to both candidate’s race/ethnicity. I don’t think either showing is indicative that an African-American candidate would be a guarantee to have a strong showing, but one who proves to be a strong candidate could certainly do well in this district.

The Trevino runoff showing should be highlighted for those counting this as a Hispanic opportunity district. Yes, it was a low turnout, low information affair. But still. What’s more interesting is the first round of the AL5 contest, where you begin to get a broader sense of how the multi-cultural aspect of this district could play out. That Tom Nixon did nearly 5 points better than his citywide showing is certainly one datapoint that conservatives from Sharpstown and other subdivisions still hold a bit of electoral strength. That the two Anglos (Nixon and Christie) won 31.6% combined is an amplification of that point.

To no surprise, the district shows a good overperformance for African-American candidates. In fact, as the first round of AL5 shows, all three African-American candidates overperform their citywide share. I’m not overly concerned that Jones’ runoff showing against Trevino is indicative of any overpowering strength from the African-American community in the district. The district is 5-points less Afr-Am friendly on the Harris County side and the area is still undergoing some demographic shifts. And compared to the other two African-American districts, this is still the third-place district for that count. I’ll have a comparison of the other two districts with this one over the weekend to highlight that point. For now, it may be true enough that the African-American community has a good hold on elections in this district. But it’s one worth keeping an eye on for future changes.

UPDATE 2.0: 2009 General Election and Runoff results for the Mayoral contest now added. One cavaet is that there are a different number of precincts and likely some precinct boundary changes between 2009 and 2010. Since the overall numerical differences in totals was small, I opted to merely match up precinct numbers and not account for more precise alterations. In the case of the General Election, it leads to 163 fewer votes cast. For the runoff, it leads to 25 fewer votes cast. I’m willing to call it close enough given that margin of error.

UPDATE: Now added RV and SSRV counts for each district, also. Although SSRV isn’t the same thing as the entirety of Hispanic registered voters, it’s listed under Hispanic in the charts below for the sake of relating it to the CVAP numbers.

———–

Now that the mapping is done at City Council, here’s my district-by-district snapshot combined with some relevant math from the districts.

One point that’s worth re-iterating on the math side: the CVAP numbers below are a far rougher calculation on my part. That methodology is explained here. Similarly, in all but two of the districts, we see “the case of the mysteriously growing Anglos” from the Census’ VAP counts to the CVAP estimates. Some of that may very well be due to my methodology of counting block groups for the CVAP totals. But there are other instances of this happening in situations where that source for error doesn’t exist. Your backgrounder on that can be found here and here. Most of the differences seem within the margins of what I’ve seen in comparing apples-to-apples methodology. District E’s jump of ~9000 new Anglos, however, strikes me as worth a closer look. As noted before, there were a high degree of split block groups that I had to account for in this district. But in any event, I don’t think there’s much doubt that the district is effectively controlled by Anglo voters.

In any event, the main point to take away from the different rows are that it is important to understand a district in terms of the overall population it serves and in terms of the electoral possibilities that exist within the district. Read, discuss, argue … do with the information below as you wish.

Fundamentally, this district doesn’t change much at all. It’s still centered primarily on Spring Branch and it’s still an Anglo-dominated district in city elections. Granted, the district may change electorally. That was seen in the 2009 election which sent Brenda Stardig into a runoff with Lane Lewis. It’ll be gradual, but this district could have a council election to watch in 2015.

The district sheds some of it’s Hispanic population in the middle of the bridge between Fifth Ward and Acres Homes. The district was effectively controlled by those voters before and it will be moreso in the future. Much like District A, it is essentially unchanged.

District C is the winner for “Most Altered” due to it starting off as District K in the original map proposed by the administration. Politically speaking, the district moves from being a moderate-to-conservative district to one that will likely be more reliably liberal over the course of the decade. That the district does not have an incumbent means that there should be a fairly high-stakes election contest to look forward to. The district encircles much of the Anglo Dem area of Harris County, picking up some small pockets of minority population stranded from District H and A.

The upcoming election contest will be highlighted by former State Rep. Ellen Cohen. But Cohen will have to become better known to voters north of I-10, where she’s never run for office. And since the Heights is a-changing and has its own distinct brand of identity politics, it will be interesting to see how the two halves of the district get along now that they’re thrown together. It could very well be that splits may emerge as they did in the current District H between the Heights and the near Northside. We could find out as early as November as candidates from each of the major areas in the district have already filed.

As before, so into the future. District D remains a south-side African-American district. That’s made marginally easier since it loses the more Anglo Montrose neighborhood and sheds some of the mixed Black/Brown areas to the southwest. The district definitely becomes more Sunnyside-centric than it was before. But the district only gains a few points in African-American population. That comes in spite of losing the more black/brown mixed area on the southwest side of town.

What it trades for that is the Myakawa Tail to the southeast. The Myakawa tail is the only inexplicable aspect of this district. That area is majority-Hispanic at both the Total Pop. and VAP level, with it clocking in at 41% Hispanic at the CVAP level. It’s roughly a quarter of the district in terms of population. The difference doesn’t seem like it’s enough to alter an election in a significant way for this decade. But it will likely continue trending more Hispanic and possibly make more sense to attach to District I next decade.

By this time next decade, we may be looking at a District D that is under 50% African-American. The fact that many current African-American districts are of a total population plurality, CVAP majority is something that will ultimately hit Houston city council districts.

Once more, the Kingwood-to-Clear Lake connection is left intact. Once more for the record, this is due to the fact that breaking the two up would pose VRA concerns as African-American voters in Fifth Ward and Hispanic voters in southeast Houston would be drowned out by Anglo voters if the two were split and attached to their nearest communities. There are only two ways this district ever becomes disconnected: either the city annexes enough new territory to require re-redistricting, or council goes to a 16 single-member district format.

As such, the district joins A and B as one of the more fundamentally unchanged districts from the last decade. Considering the high share of Anglo voters, it should remain as politically target-rich for conservative candidates as it always has.

As Mayor Parker noted during the council passage of the redistricting plan, District F represents the biggest change in a district where the incumbent has to run for re-election. It’s worth keeping that in mind since the district has changed in significant ways. See here for my earlier breakdown of how the new part of the district compares to the existing portion still in District F. The unfortunate reality of how 2 different Asian candidates have been elected to the current District F despite being only the third largest demographic group was due to the current F’s status as a hollow district, with a large number of Hispanic constituents ineligible to vote. That changes now. The district is no longer as hollow as it was before. And the fact that the CVAP share of Asians is lower than both the VAP share is telling. Al Hoang could very well be the last Asian Council Member elected from District F as a result. And it’s probably in his best interest to get to know as many Anglo civic activists north of Westheimer as possible.

Al should be fine for his own re-election, though – incumbents can always raise more money than challengers and are already proven as capable campaigners. After Al, however, is when things get interesting. Another point to remember about the district is that it’s presently term-limited at the same time as the Mayor. That means an open contest, the 34% Afr-Am CVAP share becomes important. Whether an African-American candidate can emerge with enough crossover appeal to reach a majority or merely just plays the spoiler is a distinct possibility in future elections. The likelier scenario for the second half of the decade is that Anglos from either Royal Oaks or Briarmeadow realize the math of this district and a candidate emerges from one of those communities.

The Country Club-to-Tanglewood area isn’t going to go anywhere anytime soon. So it remains as the most target-rich environment for conservative westside candidates. Worth putting in the back of your mind, however, is this bit of math: the current District G went from 66.5% Anglo to 50.9% Anglo between 2000 and 2010. This version of G starts off as 60.8%. While the demographic trends of the last decade were fueled by two phenomena that have since abated: immigration and the combination of new home construction with easy financing. It’s still possible, however, that the quintessential GOP-friendly district that includes the most distinguished country club in the city will join the ranks of majority-minority by the end of the decade. That it could happen without impacting the electoral reality of the district as it continues to elect conservative Anglos is something that may be worth paying more attention to, also.

The biggest change here is that District H loses the Heights. That’s due to more than just the fact that going from 9 to 11 districts forces districts to shrink. It’s also due to the need for a Hispanic district to lose a portion of Houston that’s going through the inglorious process of re-honkification. Yeah, that phrase is gonna catch on.

The new District H also gains the remainder of Denver Harbor. Together with shedding the Heights, that means we likely won’t see a re-run of a race like Welsh v Gonzalez in District H. It will be far more reliably Hispanic from here on out. The balance of voter strength still resides on the northside, so it’s very likely that the district will continue to crank out candidates from Lindale Park. But Denver Harbor is a very well-organized area, so it will be worth watching to see how regional differences play out once the seat becomes open.

The new district loses Denver Harbor as its most significant change. There’s a bit of turf shaving outside of downtown, as well. But the district doesn’t change in any fundamental way. It’s easily the most Hispanic district in town, just with a power base that shifts slightly to the south.

Color me conflicted. I don’t have an objection to the creation of a new district that focuses primarily on my ‘hood. But the district is being peddled as a “Hispanic opportunity district” when it really isn’t. As the Chron’s Op-Ed notes, the district’s SSRV count is only 17.3%. The reason it grates on me is this – I get tired of being told that Hispanics don’t vote. They do. So, when an Anglo is elected from this district, the outcome will feed into what I consider that false stereotype. Both the op-ed and the previously linked FWST article make the comparison to CD29 and the fact that Gene Green, an Anglo, gets elected out of what is technically a Hispanic district. There’s a world of difference: CD29 has 56% Hispanic CVAP and 53% SSRV (reference). That’s a far cry from the 25% and 17% in this district.

One interesting item to consider with this district is that while the current District F that covers much of this new district has been represented by two “parachute” candidates who did not reside in the district prior to running for office, the inability to pass Prop. 2 in the last election means that nobody will have time to drop into this district in time to run. See here for last month’s overview of the district

For once, the Fort Bend County portion of Houston has a bigger say in a council district election. While that area stands out as a prominent feature of the district, however, only 17% of the Voting Age Population resides in Fort Bend. What may be more noticable with this district over time is the way that the demographic trends among southwest Houston’s African-American and Hispanic population affect the district’s representation. By and large, the African-American population in Houston has stagnated in the last decade while the Hispanic population has grown for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is due to the new home construction boomlet along the city’s southern edges. That boomlet is obviously cooling in recent years, but there is still open space to develop. For now, the African-American population in this district has the numbers and the political organization.

The CVAP numbers here are informative of how a district that is ostensible drawn to be nothing more than minority-majority will effectively become an African-American district. It’s still early in the candidate-filing season, but HoustonWorks’ Larry Green looks like a fairly solid fit among the early signees. Given the slim African-American majority in the CVAP counts, it’s worth digging through Voter Registration data and comparing heavy-turnout and low-turnout elections to see if that majority is still present in each case. In particular, the low-turnout years would be interesting to see if the vote shares among African-Americans and Anglos changes significantly. The seat will obviously come up for the first time in a low-turnout cycle. So the research might be of rather immediate interest.

Below are the Citizen Voting Age Population totals for each Houston City Council District.

A note on my methodology is in order before that, though. There are better ways to arrive at these numbers than the method I’ve done. My method is simply one that allows for a relatively quick means of determining the percentages for demographic groups listed below. I can’t overstate enough that I’m doing this as a one-man show, without benefit of interns, students, or other minions willing to do work for me. Peer review is a good thing and if anyone else wants to take a crack at it, I’d love to see the numbers that result from that effort.

The 2005-09 CVAP counts are offered at the Census Block Group level at it’s most granular data point. My means of listing which block groups are counted is obtained visually by overlaying the council district map on top of the CVAP by block group map. I then de-select and transcribe each individual block group for each district and then dump those lists into a database where a custom script does the counting.

The code has been checked and re-checked. The CVAP numbers, as previously noted, have several issues that should be kept in mind – they are estimates, they have a margin of error, they are based on smaller samples than in previous years, and there are return rate issues since they come from the American Community Survey rather than the Census forms. Many of those issues get massaged in putting together the estimates. But I don’t pretend to offer the sum totals below as authoritative. The percentages that follow from those numbers, however, I argue are much more reliable.

In the process of visually determining which block groups should be counted, there are inevitably a few judgment calls that result. Block groups that straddle a council district are generally counted as follows: if the district being counted is drawn to favor a demographic group for VRA purposes, I tend to include block groups that have a majority of that demographic group and not count Anglo block groups that are split in order to determine what the best possible showing for that demographic group may be. In some cases, block groups are split fairly close to 50-50 by a border. In most cases, I alternate whether or not to count a block group on that basis. In cases where a block group only covers Limited Purpose Annexation, I err on the side of not counting that block group even though there may be a small amount of population within the LPA portion of the block group.

In many of the cases where there are splits, we’re typically talking about 5 or so block groups out of 100 or more where a judgment call is needed. A significantly higher number were split in areas with a lot of LPA turf like District A and B. District E also contained a larger than normal number of judgment calls. In each case, there is no mistaking that District B is at or near the 70.8% African-American share listed below. Likewise, District E is unmistakable in its proximity to the 69.6% Anglo population listed below. District A, however, might be worth a closer look to see if it is precisely above or below 50% Anglo. It might be worth suggesting that District K could use a closer look to determine if the African-American population there is over 50% based on a more precise analysis. But given the lower number of judgment calls made on split block groups in the district, I’m a lot more confident in standing by the fact that District K is slightly over 50% African-American.

For a comparison, here are the totals that the Census Bureau provides for the entire City of Houston along with two of the most relevant counts from the report below.

Totals (Census Bureau)
Total CVAP … 1,206,360
Hispanic CVAP … 281,235

Totals (Greg’s Count)
Total CVAP … 1,139,280
Hispanic CVAP … 263,684

That means my counts are 5.56% short of the total CVAP count and 6.24% short on the Hispanic CVAP count when compared to the definitive count done by the Census Bureau. In general, the shares for each demographic group don’t change terribly much. If I get an opening in time sometime soon, as well as a block assignment file for the city, I may work with that to get a more refined count. But I’d argue that the percentages you see below are informative enough to draw any conclusions with.

From Sunday’s episode of “Visions” focusing on redistricting and the impact on the Asian community. Most of it has to do with City of Houston stuff, but there’s a nod to the situation with State House redistricting as well.

Council is now in session and the first motion of the day was to move a few items up to the top of the list, taking them out of order. Redistricting is one of those items. Once we get to whatever discussion there is, I’ll be hitting the keyboard.

Clutterbuck and Noriega place pre-emptive tags on Items 41 and 41a, which are the Redistricting items. Parliamentary for now. Quickest liveblog ever? Council agenda was a breeze this week and it looks like redistricting is going to be fully moved to next week without much discussion this time around. Still sticking around for the council comments in case anything comes up. But it looks like there’s now a week to brace for any public debate that arises from redistricting.